The arrival of StorageNetworks’ latest technology is in synch with an industry-wide trend toward bundling comprehensive storage management tools such capacity planning and performance monitoring into a single, easily managed GUI, and then adding automation to the mix.

Storage companies such as EMC Corp., Hitachi Data Systems Corp., Fujitsu Ltd. and TrueSAN Networks Inc. have each taken their storage software products in this direction.

StorageNetwork’s STORos and Storage Manager offer storage administrators six key functions to address six concerns that Atac said users face on a daily basis.

The first, asset and configuration management, helps customers get a grip on their diverse storage resources to optimize their storage network. Capacity planning and management functions help users purchase only the storage they actually need for their network and business requirements; infrastructure performance management helps users monitor the level of network performance they are achieving; and event and status management tools monitor the network in real time and assist in the early detection of problems that could potentially lead to network downtime. Integrated backup and restore tools ensure data is protected, and all of STORos’ functions are themselves backed up by StorageNetwork’s service-level management agreement, according to Atac.

Users of StorageNetwork’s STORos technology have experienced nearly a three-fold increase in storage capacity utilization. Annual storage network downtime is reduced to an average of just 40 minutes using STORos, and backup completion percentages within the allotted window of time are driven as high as 99.4 per cent, according to StorageNetworks.

A tighter coupling of storage management technology and business process technology also give STORos an advantage that is palatable to the end-user, Atac said.

“Enabling the customer to really extract real value within a 12-month period depends on the requirements of not just understanding all of the underlying technologies and the interoperability of the technology, but also the business processes needed for the business to automate through software,” Atac said.

The automation component of STORos and other recent similar storage management software offerings from EMC, TrueSANs, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Veritas Software Corp., and others, represents a major milestone for a storage industry trying to simply complex storage management for their customers, according to Tony Prigmore, a senior analyst with the Enterprise Storage Group Inc., in Milford, Mass.